The Island Where Time Stands Still (54 page)

With a roar of rage Kâo sprang to his feet and bellowed, ‘This is monstrous! I will not sit here and allow myself to be maligned! I demand that this malicious foolery be ended.'

It was now the young Mandarin of the Ping family who replied. Raising his voice against Kâo's, he cried, ‘And I demand that the prisoner be heard to the end. It may be that he will give us a different version to yours of how my Uncle Tsai died, and tell us what it was that my honourable father ate at your banquet that you did not eat.'

With a grim smile, Gregory bowed to him. ‘I shall come very shortly now to the matter of your honourable uncle's death. But first, as I was about to say, Kâo Hsüan's ambitious plans were unexpectedly upset. From fear that one of its members might harbour just such ambitions, the Council very wisely decided to invite Princess Josephine to come here and choose a husband from one of the Seven Families. That was a severe set-back for our conspirator, but it did not turn him from his purpose; and as a first step he got him
self appointed as your ambassador to fetch the Princess and her mother to the Island.

‘About his conduct when he arrived in San Francisco we must make another assumption—namely that he wanted to get in as long a session of gambling as possible before returning. In any case, instead of conveying your invitation to Madame Août at once, he did not even call on her until May the 13th; and then only to pay his respects, leaving any mention of the invitation till a later date. But it was on that day that Mr. Lin Wân enters the story, and I now intend to read you some extracts from his diary.'

‘I protest!' Kâo's face had suddenly gone pale, but he came to his feet again. ‘That diary may be a forgery! That account given in it may not be true! Lin Wân is dead, and no one but he could vouch for what is written there.'

‘Enough!' rapped out Ah-moi. Then, turning his back on Kâo, he said to Gregory, ‘Read these extracts to us.'

Opening the book, Gregory said, ‘I shall read only extracts that are of interest to your excellencies. The first concerns events on May the 13th.'

‘“Called on Madame Août to pay my respects. Her daughter a lovely little creature but should be married by now. Met there that old rogue Kâo Hsüan. He invited me to dine on his yacht two nights hence and play Fan-tan afterwards. I accepted.”

‘The next entry reads: “Dined on yacht and lost four-fifty dollars to Kâo at Fan-tan. This makes me angry, but I think I see a way to far more than repay myself. Being aware that I know all about their Island the officers of the yacht talked to me freely. They are full of excitement at their reason for being here. Kâo has been charged to take Josephine Août back to the Island so that she may be made its Empress. The Council of the Island is immensely rich. If I handle this with skill there should be more profit in it for me than I would make from a life-time of trading with them.”

‘The next entry reads: “Have seen Quong-Yü and arranged matters with him. To kidnap both women simultaneously
would more than double the difficulties; and Quong insists that Madame Août cannot be left to furnish information to the police. In any case her presence here would cause me great embarrassment. Have regretfully decided that she must be eliminated. Quong is to send the girl aboard after dark. He stuck out for his price—a hundred thousand dollars—but she must be worth ten times that to Kâo and his friends.”

‘The next entry reads: “Madame Août dead and girl on board. She was naturally much frightened but entirely reassured on seeing me. I invented a story about an invitation from Chiang Kai-shek, as a result of which Communists had killed her mother and now threaten her life. She has accepted my protection without question. Have instructed Quong-Yü that, without revealing who has her, he is to act as my go-between with Kâo, and ask a million dollars for her ransom.”

‘The next entry reads: “Kâo refuses to negotiate. I cannot understand it.”

‘The next entry reads: “Kâo still refuses to negotiate. This is becoming awkward as I am due to sail the day after tomorrow, and I am a hundred thousand dollars out of pocket.”

‘The next entry reads: “Everything is settled. Not altogether satisfactory from my point of view, but it was quite impossible for me to foresee the turn matters would take. However, it is proving one of the most fascinating intrigues in which I have ever engaged. Yesterday, invited Kâo to dine last night and play return game of Fan-tan. After a dozen hands I admitted to having had the little Princess kidnapped. He was furious; but I only laughed and asked what she was really worth to him. He replied ‘nothing' and from that I could not budge him. Then, after a while, feeling there must be more in this than met the eye, I drew a bow at a venture, and said, ‘Very well, then. As she is such a lovely little thing, I will get my money's worth out of her as well as I can by keeping her to look at during my voyage to China; then I will find some means to send her to the
Island—for nothing.' Immediately, he took alarm, and shortly afterwards admitted that while she was of no value to him alive she was worth a considerable sum to him dead. I insisted that before I would do a deal I must know the reason for that. He then had no option but to reveal the truth to me. It seems that he is already weary of his retirement and hankers after the flesh-pots of Europe. He maintains that in a few skilful moves he can make himself the Dictator of the Island, and from then on stay there or travel as he likes. But if the Princess ever reaches the Island and marries into one of its Seven Families, the creation of a new Emperor will place such ambitions forever beyond his reach. I should be most loath to order the killing of the child, but I asked him how much he would give me to do so. He replied by naming an absurd sum, and eventually I got him up to half a million. It then transpired that he had not got it. However, he should have that and more if he succeeds in becoming Dictator. Before we parted it was agreed that I should give him six months in which to bring his plans to fruition, and meanwhile take the girl home with me. If by the end of that time he has not sent me the money I am to send the Princess to the Island. If he pays up I am to have her killed. Of course I shall not do so. She is much too lovely; and it would be a fine distinction to have an Imperial Highness in the family. I shall marry her to one of my sons.”'

Closing the diary, Gregory went on, ‘So you see, Excellencies, the position in which Kâo Hsüan was placed. Had it not been for Lin Wân's intervention, we can hardly doubt what would have happened. Your ambitious President would, in due course, have received Madame Août and her daughter on the yacht, and he would have seen to it that Josephine met with a fatal accident during the voyage. Then, freed for good from her as a menace to his plans, he would have been able to proceed with them at his leisure. Even as things were, we may fairly assume that he intended to do so during the six months' grace Lin Wân had given
him. But the Council decreed otherwise. They sent him back to search for the Princess.

‘We now come to his second stay in San Francisco. Knowing the Princess to be by that time in China, and that Quong-Yü would not voluntarily reveal the criminal activities that took place six weeks before, he no doubt felt confident that the mission would have to return to the Island and confess failure. That would have been the case, had not Tsai-Ping asked me to go to Washington. The co-operation of the F.B.I. led us to Quong-Yü, but it became swiftly apparent to our conspirator that I was the only person who could exert pressure enough on the Tong boss to make him talk. Given those circumstances, I consider it a fair assumption that they got together and planned to kill me on the way to the Tong headquarters. I escaped death only by a miracle; and instead of myself, it was the unfortunate Tsai-Ping on whose head Quong-Yü's hatchet-men let fall the banana crates.

‘We may well suppose that Kâo Hsüan was pleased to see that capable and conscientious Mandarin safely removed from his path; and in the larger picture things did not seem to be going badly for him. Quong-Yü's disclosure, that the Princess was seven thousand miles away in a remote part of China, gave him good grounds for suggesting that the hunt for her should be abandoned. But in that he was overruled by a combination of Mr. Wu-ming Loo, the lady A-lu-te and Captain Ah-moi Sung; so to save face he was compelled to agree to the mission's continuing to carry out its instructions.

Now that we were bound for Yen-an he was under the necessity of getting rid of Wu-ming, in case he learned on our arrival there of the bargain that had been made with Lin Wân. Moreover, my handling of Quong-Yü must have caused him to realise that I, too, might prove a serious menace to his plans; so he decided that both of us must be eliminated at the earliest suitable opportunity.

‘Having set his servant P'ei to spy on me, after we had been two weeks at sea he learned that it was my habit to
have Foo bring me a cocktail every night when I was changing for dinner. One evening the cocktail brought to me contained poison. At the time I did poor Wu-ming the injustice of believing that it was he who had attempted to murder me; although Foo told me that P'ei had been in the pantry when he mixed the drink. Two months later, when Foo rescued the Princess from P'ei and beat him up, he forced him to talk. P'ei then confessed that his master, Kâo Hsüan, had ordered him to put poison in my cocktail.'

Ah-moi held up his hand. ‘One minute! What is this about Foo rescuing the Princess from Kâo Hsüan's servant?'

Gregory cast a swift glance at Kâo, who, grey-faced and glowering, had now resigned himself to the role of silent onlooker; then he replied:

‘We shall come to that in due course, Excellency. With your leave I will continue to take each event in its proper order. As I was about to say, I had the good fortune to escape your President's polite attention, but poor Wu-ming did not. After his attack on me he was in no state to defend himself, and again we have an admission by P'ei to Foo, that it was he and his master who threw Wu-ming overboard.

‘In an endeavour to kill two birds with one stone, Kâo Hsüan did his best to cast suspicion for that crime on me; and things might have gone ill for me then, had not the lady A-lu-te generously provided me with an alibi.

‘The removal of suspicion from myself tended to throw it upon the murderers, although I had not the sense to see that at the time; so my enemy's next move was a double-edged one aimed at diverting suspicion from himself and depriving me of my watch-dog Foo, so that I might be more easily attacked. Two nights later, he took advantage of Foo's being at the top of a ladder with him to throw himself down it, then he accused Foo of having attempted to kill him. By his stratagem he succeeded in getting Foo locked up; but apparently he could find no opportunity to
make a further attempt upon myself until we reached Antung-Ku.

‘That it was P'ei who went ashore there from the sampan and procured a snake to put in my bunk on Kâo Hsüan's orders can rest only on assumption, as Foo, knowing nothing of that episode, did not question P'ei about it. I escaped, but Tsai-Ping's old servant, Che-khi, died of the snake's bite; and, in view of all that had gone before, who can doubt that Kâo Hsüan was also responsible for the agonising death suffered by this innocent man.

‘During our long journey up river I can only think that I owed my immunity from attack to the confined quarters of the sampan. My would-be murderer must have felt that should he again try to kill me while we were in it, and fail, he would have exposed his hand and might become the victim of a reprisal. But after we left Tung-kwan, he made one final effort to eliminate me before we reached Yen-an. He suborned the master and men of the caravan with which we were travelling to stone me to death. Fortunately for me, Foo, who had joined the caravan in disguise, learned of the plot and succeeded in foiling it.'

Gregory paused and, opening the diary again, went on, ‘I will now read you some further passages from the secret jottings set down by Lin Wân. Those which interest us start on September the 28th. On that day an entry reads:

‘“A surprise this morning. There arrived here one P'ei, a servant of Kâo Hsüan, with a letter from his master. In it Kâo tells me that he is on his way up from Tung-kwan, to collect the little Princess. This is good news in one way but bad in another. The half-million dollars that he brings will be welcome; but had he sent them I had meant to keep them, and the Princess; at least until he had disgorged another half-million for her. But as he is coming for her himself I have not the face to go back on our bargain so must hand her over to him. I never expected that Kâo would find himself in a position to pay up so soon—if ever; so I had intended to marry the girl to Tû-lai. Fortunately he has shown some reluctance to take her for a wife, so he will not be
greatly disappointed. Kâo asks me in his letter to make no mention of our bargain to any of those who are accompanying him. But I must now tell Tû-lai something of this matter, and at the same time warn him to keep it a close secret.”

‘The next entry is on the 30th, and reads: “A bitter disappointment. Kâo has arrived, with his niece and a well-mannered Englishman who is, apparently, an intimate friend of the family—but no half-million dollars. It seems that Kâo has not got far with his ambitious plans since we last met, but he still has great hopes of achieving them if I will aid him. We are to talk of this tomorrow.”

‘The next entry reads: “I have had talk with Kâo and I am wondering if I have let him get the best of me; but I think not. He certainly has a most subtle mind, and, knowing that I would not let him have the Princess unless he paid me for her, he produced a most ingenious plan. We are to find some girl who can temporarily be passed off as Her Highness. He will take this woman away with him, and as they go down river have her drowned—although her death will be made to appear an accident. He can then return to the Island and, with his niece for witness, state that the Princess lost her life on the way there. As there is no other candidate for the throne that the Council would be willing to accept, it will remain vacant and Kâo get his chance to become Dictator. Should he succeed he will be in a position to pay me for my help. Should he fail I can take the Princess to the Island myself and expose this cheat of his in having reported her to be dead. I am to find a girl suitable to undertake the imposture; but I put my price for carrying the whole matter through at a million dollars and he agreed.”